“Most.” He pulled out his phone to refresh his memory. “About sixty percent. Most of the rest were abducted by relatives. About 3000 have been found, though only sixteen of those were abducted by non-family relatives.”
“But that’s what happened to Ossie Coleman?”
“Apparently. No other relatives have disappeared.”
“I ran away from home once.” Another small smile played on Maria’s lips. “My dad wouldn’t let me stay up to watch some nonsense on Nickelodeon. So I said I was leaving. I was six at the time.”
“Did he try to stop you?”
“No, he helped me pack.”
“Ouch.”
“He knew I wouldn’t go far. I walked around the block twice till I cooled off, then I came home. He didn’t even look up. ‘Maria Morales,’ he said. ‘It’s your night to do the dishes.’ And that was it.”
“Sounds like he handled it perfectly.”
“I loved my daddy.” She suddenly started, as if catching herself. “Oh—I’m sorry.”
“Because you loved your dad?”
“Because—I know how you lost yours.”
He shook his head. “Old news.”
“Sounds like it might be coming back to the surface.”
“Just a coincidence, probably.”
She hung a sharp right. “Must’ve been a hard thing to deal with. Like at school. Everybody knowing your dad...”
“Is in the big house? Yeah, not a walk in the park. Especially since I knew he was innocent.” He paused. “But nobody else did.”
She parked the Jag on the street. “That must’ve been hell for a young boy.”
His face remained phlegmatic. “You know what Nietzsche said. That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”
“Nietzsche had syphilis, mental illness, pneumonia, and died at age fifty-five.”
He stepped out of the car. “So I guess that didn’t make him stronger...”
* * *
Joan and Marjorie Reynolds had been taking in short-term foster kids for more than a decade. The stipend was puny, so Dan knew they could only do it out of a genuine love for children. The authorities weren’t sure what to do in this case, since Ossie Coleman would be eighteen and technically an adult, but since they had no other ideas, they put him here until his identity could be legally determined.
Ossie was in a room he shared with another boy, but the roomie wasn’t home, so they had a little privacy. He looked thin but healthy. Light African-American complexion. Curly hair. Blinked a lot. His clothes were pure Walmart—standard jeans and a solid blue t-shirt. He seemed open and eager to please.
He introduced himself and Maria and asked if the boy wanted them to represent him in the declaratory judgment suit. He did. Mr. K had already sent the paperwork, so there were no surprises.
“I really appreciate you guys helping me out with this,” Ossie said. “That guardian tried to explain it all to me, but I didn’t follow it much.”
“Understandable,” Dan said, smiling. “I don’t always understand everything judges say, and I went to law school. Would you mind telling us your story? I know you’ve already told the police, probably several times, and we can get copies of those reports. But I’d like to hear it from you.”
“Sure.” Ossie sat on the edge of his bed. “What do you want to know?”
“I hear you’re having memory problems?”
“Yeah. Major league. I remember my mom—barely. But everything between then and now is mostly gone. I get flashes, images—but not much else. I don’t know why. When the cops found me, I didn’t know where I was or how I got there. I knew my name and that was about it. They say my memory might come back in time, but so far—nothing.”
There were many possible reasons for memory loss, of course. Everyone’s memories of early years tend to be spotty and unreliable. A blow to the head could cause memory loss—and when he was found, he was treated for a serious head injury. Or stress could do it. Alcohol abuse. Malnutrition. Emotional duress. And he couldn’t rule out the possibility of neurological damage, given how little they knew about him. “Let’s start at the beginning. Are you Ossie Coleman?”
The boy looked back at him quizzically. “Of course I am. That’s my name. Always has been.”
“Do you know what happened to your mother?”
“No, sorry. Must’ve blocked that out. If I ever knew.”
“Where did you go after you were separated from your mother?”
“Or to put it differently,” Maria said, “where have you been the last fourteen years?”
“Someplace remote. Lots of trees. Woods. No neighbors. No television. No phone.”
“What woods? This is beach country. Are you talking about the Everglades? Something like that?”
“I’m not sure. Tall trees. Lots of green. I’m sorry—I don’t know where it was. I never left, till the very end. We lived in a cabin.”
“Why do you call it a cabin?” Dan asked. “Was it made of logs?”
“No. Wood and stone, I think. But it was out by itself.”
“Describe the cabin.”
Ossie thought for a moment. “It was just a place. It had a wood porch. A rocking chair. You could sit out there and watch the sun set.”
So it faced west. “Go on.”
“It had a number carved on that big thing hanging over the front door.”
“A gable?”
“I dunno. I guess so.”
“What number?”
“1-9-8-0.”
A street address number? The year it was built? “What color?”
“Kind of a dark brown. Except for a yellow triangle on the gable. Bright yellow.”
A brown cabin in the woods with a spot of bright yellow paint? “You told the police about a guy named Joe.”
“Yeah. He lived with me. Fed me. Taught me to read and stuff. He had a phone, but he didn’t let me anywhere near it.”
“An adult?”
“Yeah. Way old. Older than you even.”
Practically decrepit. “You called him Joe?”
“Yeah. I dunno if that was his real name or not. He had big bushy hair. Spots of gray. Lots of tattoos, all up and down his arms.”
“Describe the tattoos.”
“Jeez, I dunno. I never really thought about it. There was some kind of flower on his right arm, just above the bicep. Lots of ivy or green stuff streaming down from it. A heart. And letters—but not normal letters. I think maybe they were Russian or something. They looked weird.”
“Like the Cyrillic alphabet?”
“I...don’t know what that means.”
“Doesn’t matter. What else?”
“He had tattoos on his legs, too. I saw them when he wore shorts. Never really thought about what they were.”
“Was he strong?”
“Very. Pumped iron. Had a lot of barbells in his bedroom. Big muscles. Kinda scary.”
“You look pretty strong yourself.”
“He let me use them sometimes. When he was in a good mood.”
“How did Joe support himself?”
“Uh...sorry?”
“How did he pay the bills?”
“I dunno. I don’t think he had many bills.”
“He must’ve fed you.”
“Yeah. We always had food. Mostly frozen meat and Cheerios.”
“You had a refrigerator?”
“Yeah.”
“So you must’ve had electricity.”
“He had a generator thing behind the cabin.”
“And you were in this place for fourteen years?”
“I guess. I didn’t know much about time. I didn’t have any way to keep track of it.”
“Any other visitors?”
“No.”
“You seem well spoken.” That was an understatement. He wouldn’t expect someone raised in isolation to sound like an urban street kid. But this boy, despite his past, had the vocabulary of a college student. “Did you...go to school?”
“No. Joe taught me. From books. We had lots of books in the cabin and he made me study. Punished me if I didn’t. Said he didn’t want me to grow up sounding like ghetto trash. I didn’t even really know what a ghetto was, but I knew he wanted me to read and talk proper English.”
Sounded like a nightmare. Isolated, home-schooled, and punished by his abductor. And he had barely begun to scratch the surface of the horrors that might have taken place in this cabin. “Was Joe...nice to you?”
Another shrug. “He fed me. Played checkers with me sometimes. Or poker with matchsticks. Cut my finger once chopping wood and he took care of it.”
“But did he ever...” He swallowed. This was beyond hard. “Did he hurt you?”
“He made me work. Do chores.”
“Did he...take advantage of you?”
Ossie thought for a moment. “He would go away for a long time. Leave the cabin. Said he was going for supplies. And he had a room in the back that he kept locked all the time. Sometimes I heard weird noises when he was back there.”
“Human noises?”
“Maybe. Sometimes.”
“Did you ask him about it?”
“Yeah. He said I heard the radio.”
“But you haven’t answered my question about—”
“You know, when it’s all you’ve ever known, you just get used to everything. It might seem weird to someone else, but when it’s what you do, what you always do, day after day for years, it just seems normal.”
“That doesn’t mean it is normal,” Maria said, leaning toward Ossie a bit.
“It’s over now. And there’s some stuff I’d rather not talk about. You know what I mean?”
His jaw clenched tightly together. Yes, he certainly did understand what the boy meant. He understood all too well.
Chapter 7
Dan decided it was time for a short break. Marjorie brought in lemonade and they all stretched their legs a bit. Ossie showed Maria how to play Fortnite.
He took advantage of the break to speak to Marjorie. “I’m guessing you’ve seen all kinds of kids come through here.”
She nodded. Blonde. Braids. Late 40s, early 50s. Gap between her front teeth. “You would be right about that.”
“Including kids who’ve been abused.”
“Sadly true.”
“What do you think about Ossie?”
“Do you mean, do I think he was abused, out in that remote cabin he told the police about?”
“That’s what I’m wondering. He doesn’t seem to have much to say about this Joe, even though Joe was the only person he saw for years.”
“Ossie doesn’t display the classic signs of abuse, the prevaricating and hiding. The secretiveness. The fear of being alone. But I do sense there’s something he’s not telling anyone. Of course, that’s not uncommon with kids placed in foster homes. They all think they’ve done something wrong, even if they haven’t. They think they’re being punished. They’ve learned to believe they’re inferior, don’t deserve better than they’ve gotten. And Ossie is older than most of the kids that come through here. Legally speaking, assuming he is Ossie Coleman, he’s eighteen.”
“Does that make him more likely to recover? Or just more damaged?”
Marjorie shook her head slowly. “I don’t know.”
Ossie and Maria finished their Fortnite grand combat. Ossie explained that he had only learned the game a few days ago. Maria hadn’t played before at all, but she proved frighteningly talented at it. All that Fitbitting must improve the hand-to-eye coordination, Dan reasoned.
He noticed that Ossie seemed a bit more at ease. Maybe he was getting used to them. “How did you get away from Joe?”
Ossie shook his head. He looked as if he were trying to recall, trying to haul a memory out of deep storage, but it wasn’t coming. “I don’t remember. I think we had...some kind of fight.”
“Like...a physical fight?”
“Yeah. I think he hit me—pretty hard.” He pointed to the left side of his head. “That’s how I got this.” A serious head wound. “My clothes were covered with dried blood. Enough to cause a girl to scream when I ran up to their car.”
“The police say they found you at a downtown crossing.”
“Yeah. I saw a group of people. I ran up to them and told them who I was.”
“You said, ‘Hello, I’m Ossie Coleman.’”
“Actually, my first words were, ‘Can you give me a ride home?’”
“And by home you meant—”
“The cabin. I didn’t know anyplace else. Then I told them my name. The man’s eyes bugged out. I guess he remembered when I disappeared, way back when. He called the cops.”
“After you told the police who you were, they tried to confirm your identity.” But they were unsuccessful. And they still hadn’t been able to confirm that he was or wasn’t who he claimed to be. They hadn’t found the cabin in the woods, either. The problem was, they had no location, not even a rough geographical area, which made searching almost impossible. “So they contacted the Coleman relatives. Your grandfather. Your uncles.”
“Yeah.” A grin broke out on his face. “I never knew I had relatives. I never thought I had anybody.”
“Your grandfather has a ton of money,” Maria said, with her usual bluntness.
The smile faded from Ossie’s face. “Yeah.”
“That doesn’t make you happy?”
“Seems like that makes everything more complicated. If there was no money, no one would care if I was really Ossie. But since there is, they’re suing me.”
That summed it up accurately enough. “They want to be sure, that’s all. It’s not impossible that...an imposter could come along and pose as you to get the inheritance. It’s been tried before.”
“Yeah. I get that. It sucks. But I don’t need a lot of money. Just enough to do what I want to do.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “And what is it you want to do?”
Ossie looked embarrassed. “Aw...you’ll think it’s stupid.”
“I won’t.”
“You’ll tell me I’m just dreaming.”
“Every great career starts with a dream.”
“Well...if I had my druthers...if I could do anything I wanted—I’d be an astronaut.”
Hadn’t seen that coming.
Ossie leaned forward, excited. “You know, they’re training new people right now, out at Cape Canaveral. Not far from here. The president says we’re going back to the moon and then Mars. Man, I’d give anything to be part of that. Sailing through the stars. Bein’ a hero. Someone people admired. Wouldn’t that be awesome?”
He didn’t answer for several moments, because he knew if he did his voice would betray his feelings. “If that’s what you want, then that’s what you should go for. Never let other people crush your dreams.”
“But for that, you have to go to college. You have to get trained.”
“You’re going to need some money.”
“Maybe a little, yeah.”
“Did you tell your grandfather about your dreams?”
“No. I don’t think he’s made up his mind about me yet.”
“He’s afraid he’ll get his heart broken,” Maria surmised.
“I’d never want to do that.” Ossie paused, his eyes turning downward. “When I found out I had family, I was thrilled, you know? I thought they’d be just as excited as I was. I was wrong.”
“I’m...sorry.”
“That’s why I want you to handle this case for me. I don’t care about the money. Just give me enough to go to school—they can keep the rest. But I want them to know I’m part of their family. I like them and I want them to like me. You know what I mean?”
“I sure do,” he replied quietly.
“I guess, growing up with just Joe, I didn’t know what I was missing. But now I do. I want to belong.”
He bit down on his lower lip. “Everyone should have family.” He pushed to his feet. “Let me start investigating this, Ossie.”
“So you’ll represent me?”
“Rest assured, Ossie. We will do everything we possibly can for you.” He paused. “I know how important family is. I’m not going to let anyone take yours away.”
Chapter 8
Detective Major Jake Kakazu bent down to scrutinize the powder in the bathtub. It seemed so innocuous. But according to the CSI experts, that powder, as small and insignificant as it appeared, proved a murder had occurred. And somehow, he had to solve it—even though he didn’t have a corpse.
He’d been called in when the theater staff reported that Harrison Coleman had disappeared. Turned out, there was a reason for that.
“Medical examiner is on his way,” his young fresh-faced sergeant said.
Kakazu nodded curtly. Enriquez—wasn’t that the kid’s name? He thought so, but why take a risk? The grunt would suffice. He wasn’t a gruff person by nature, but sometimes you had to fulfill people’s expectations, mostly formed by years of watching bad television programs. “And the rest of forensics?”
“All en route. Hair and fiber. Videographers. Do you think the murder happened here?”
He knew why the lieutenant asked. There was no sign of a struggle in the office. No sign of forced entry, no overturned tables or chairs.
This crime scene had been an unending source of confusion since they arrived. Kakazu knew Harrison Coleman, barely, not so much because of his work as an impresario as because he was wrapped up in this business with the missing kid who suddenly appeared a few days ago. Coleman was one of the relatives.
The door to Coleman’s private bathroom was open, but there were no signs of a confrontation. He spoke briefly to others who worked there, but so far, no one had seen or heard anything suspicious. Coleman hadn’t been spotted since shortly before last night’s performance. That in itself was unusual—Coleman had a habit of thanking the crew and making sure the power was turned off every night after the show. He was usually the last to leave, but no one thought anything of it when he didn’t appear. Just assumed he had other things to do. An urgent appointment, maybe.
He did have an appointment. The final one. The one nobody can avoid forever.
Kakazu walked into the bathroom. Using a gloved hand, he pried open the swinging mirror to reveal the contents inside the medicine cabinet.
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